Graham Nash - I Used To Be A King

 #Graham Nash #ex-CSNY #ex-The Hollies #folk rock #country rock #singer-songwriter #1970s

Songs for Beginners is Graham Nash's solo debut apart from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Released in 1971, it is a collection of songs that reflect change, transition, and starting over. The set was recorded in both Los Angeles and San Francisco, in the immediate aftermath of Nash's traumatic breakup with Joni Mitchell. Unlike the colorful dynamism of Stephen Stills' eponymous debut recording, or the acid-drenched cosmic cowboy spaciness of David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name, Nash's album is by contrast a much more humble and direct offering. It is a true, mostly introspective songwriter's album full of beautifully performed and wonderfully recorded songs that reflect transition, movement, the desire to look backward and forward simultaneously. Like the aforementioned offering, this one is star-studded in its choice of players and singers: Crosby, Chris Ethridge, Jerry Garcia, Rita Coolidge, Clydie King, Venetta Fields, Dave Mason, Neil Young (under the pseudonym "Joe Yankee"), David Lindley, Bobby Keys, Phil Lesh, Dallas Taylor, and drummer John Barbata reflect some of the personnel on this heady yet humble session. The album is bookended by two of Nash's best-known tunes, the anthemic "Military Madness" that remains timeless in the 21st century, and "Chicago," that doesn't. That said, they are among the weakest songs here -- which reveals what a solid collection it is. Unlike many recordings birthed from personal angst, Nash's engages in no self pity; instead, he focuses on the craft of songwriting itself. Despite its personal darkness, "Better Days," with its swirling piano and pronounced bassline, is also an actual paean to self-determination and perseverance, the logic being that there were better days in the past, so there must be better ones in the future as well. "I Used to Be a King," with Garcia on a gorgeous pedal steel and Lesh on bass, is a direct, mature response to "King Midas in Reverse," a song Nash wrote and recorded with the Hollies. "Simple Man," with its sparse melody and strings and a fine backing vocal from Coolidge, was written on the afternoon of the breakup with Mitchell. The violin-cello backdrop to Nash's piano is particularly effective and makes this one of his most memorable songs. The parlor room country waltz that commences "Man in the Mirror," features Garcia's steel, Young's piano, ex-Flying Burrito Brother Ethridge, and drummer Barbata; it shifts keys, tempo, and feel about a third of the way in with a very long bridge that transforms the song's sentiment as well. Ultimately, Songs for Beginners is the strongest of Nash's solo efforts (outside of his work with Crosby).  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/songs-for-beginners-mw0000197377

Graham Nash & Joni Mitchell

Blue Rodeo - Hasn't Hit Me Yet

 #Blue Rodeo #country rock #alt-country #roots rock #Americana #folk rock #Canadian

Canada's most popular roots rock band, Blue Rodeo grew into a veritable institution in their home country, debuting in the mid-'80s and still recording and touring in the 2020s. Their sound is a flavorful blend of country, folk, and rock, informed by Americana touchstones like Gram Parsons, Bob Dylan, and the Band as well as the sterling pop songcraft of the Beatles (the latter a crucial influence for guitarist and co-founder Jim Cuddy, which shone through on their 1990 breakthrough album Casino). As the alt-country and No Depression scenes began to take hold, they won a new audience who took to the scrappy yet artful sound of 1994's Five Days in July and 1997's Tremolo, though the group's fundamental sound changed very little. Under the guidance of Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor, Blue Rodeo earned a reputation for consistent quality on-stage and in the studio, and if the tone of 2021's Many a Mile showed maturity was buffing off some of their edges, their strength as songwriters remained a constant.
Blue Rodeo was founded in Toronto by its two lead singers, guitarists, and songwriters, Cuddy and Keelor. The two met in high school and had been playing together since 1977, when they started a punk-influenced band called the Hi-Fi's. In 1981, they moved to New York in search of a record deal, and reorganized the band under a new name, Fly to France. Three years of hunting proved fruitless, and the group switched styles several times before Cuddy and Keelor returned to Toronto in 1984. The following year, they assembled a new band with the idea of returning to organic, guitar-based music in an era dominated by synth pop. Christened Blue Rodeo, the initial lineup also featured drummer Cleave Anderson, bassist Bazil Donovan, and keyboardist Bob Wiseman.
Blue Rodeo quickly became a popular live act on the Toronto scene, which was already geared toward the kind of music the band was playing. They caught the attention of John Caton's Risque Disque label, which signed them and worked out a distribution deal with Warner's Canadian division. Their 1987 debut album, Outskirts, was a smash hit in Canada, selling over 200,000 copies (the Canadian equivalent of double platinum) and landing them a slot on tour opening for k.d. lang. The more introspective, socially aware Diamond Mine followed in 1989, and it sold even better, not to mention winning the band its first of many Juno Awards.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/blue-rodeo-mn0000062860/biography

Blanche - Jack On Fire

 #Blanche #alt-country #Americana #folk blues #Southern gothic #country folk #gothic folk

The packaging for ‘If We Can’t Trust the Doctors’, the debut album by Detroit-based Blanche, includes an old time medicine ad for Blanche’s Nepenthe. The elixir claims to “induce forgetfulness of sorrow, dolor, ennui and wretchedness for those afflicted with melancholia, fits and tempers, neurasthenia, or the vapors”. The music that Blanche makes could easily be the promotional soundtrack for the Nepenthe sales pitch, the accompaniment to its traveling medicine show. It’s a collection of near-spooky gothic country-blues, dirges for sanity and laments for optimism wrapped in reverb, banjos, autoharp, pedal steel, and dank Poe atmospherics. Led X-ishly by the husband and wife duo of Dan and Tracee Mae Miller, Blanche plays old-timey Midwestern twang with one foot in authenticity and the other in well-versed satire.
Blanche was formed after the Millers’s short-lived band Two-Star Tabernacle called it quits in the late ’90s. (Another member of Two-Star Tabernacle — Jack White — would go on to find surprising success with the White Stripes, and later used members of Blanche as Loretta Lynn’s backing band for the critically acclaimed Van Lear Rose.) ‘If We Can’t Trust the Doctors’ was released by Detroit label Cass Records in 2003, was nominated for the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize, and is now finding a new life through distribution with V2 Records. Blanche is not yet a touchstone of the alt-country community, but it shows major promise as a potential bearer of folk fringe oddities.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/blanche-ifwecant-2495847373.html

Writhing and preening like a fistful of wild-eyed Southern preachers, Blanche sells sweet snake oil by the wagonload on their debut release ‘If We Can't Trust the Doctors’. Fronted by the enigmatic Dan Miller (the artist formerly known as Goober in the hillbilly-punk prototype Goober and the Peas) and his ethereal wife Tracee, the band weaves a hypnotic blend of old-timey medicine show theatrics and down-home acoustic pickin', all threaded through with a spooky string of murder ballads and women scorned. Along with assistance from Brendan Benson and His Name Is Alive's Warn DeFever, the album was handcrafted by the understated Dave Feeny, whose production reveals layers of banjo, pedal steel, autoharp, and subtly distorted guitars, all toothing together like rusting gears in a Model 'A' Ford rolled off the Detroit lines a century ago. While on the surface the songwriting seems straightforward and simple, the pages within peel back like crumbling photos in a black paper photo album lost in the drawers during the Eisenhower era.
While much of the energy from the album seems tied to the power of the old church, ‘If We Can't Trust the Doctors’ is no gospel album, but rather it taps deep into Greil Marcus' "old, weird America" of dusty 78's on Vocalion and Okeh, and the dusty-toothed wayfaring strangers of the Depression era circuit. The amazing thing about the album is that for all of its folkways influences, it still feels very much a contemporary work; certain to be found on iPods and peer-to-peer lists worldwide. Shining deep underneath the dust of the last hundred years are little glints of Blanche's sunnier moments, and while the band certainly proves that every silver lining has a cloud, the album is perfectly spooky and uplifting, chilling and rewarding, haunting and beautiful.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/if-we-cant-trust-the-doctors-mw0000396906

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Effigy

 #Creedence Clearwater Revival #roots rock #blues rock #country rock #swamp rock #classic rock #1960s #1970s

"Effigy," written by Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty, is the last track on the Willy and the Poor Boys album. This was the fourth studio album released and the third platinum album for CCR, riding the peak of their popularity in 1969. This song is a good example of the "roots rock" style that CCR helped to pioneer. While Bob Dylan is largely credited with starting the roots movement in 1966, only a handful of bands followed that lead, while the rest turned to folk, blues, or psychedelia. CCR fits into the niche within the country-influenced roots rock genre in between The Byrds, Tom Petty, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Eagles, and of course The Flying Burrito Brothers. By sticking to the basics while everybody else was jumping on the experimentation bandwagon, they could be progressive and anachronistic at the same time.
Another thing that set CCR apart was the tight cohesion of the band members. While other groups swapped members between each other like so many kids playing Red Rover, CCR remained their own little island of Fogerty, Fogerty, Clifford, and Cook, with the only change being when Tom Fogerty split in 1971, after which they were down to a trio. Furthermore, they had considerable influence for a band that was only releasing albums together five years!
CCR drummer Doug Clifford said that this is a political song through and through. "It's pointing the finger at the Nixon administration when they were crumbling," he explained in Bad Moon Rising: The Unofficial History of Creedence Clearwater Revivial. "The dark period, if you will." An effigy is a model of an actual person that is made for the purpose of being destroyed as an act of protest or expression of anger. The "palace lawn" is referring to the lawn of the White House. In Fortunate Son: My Life, My Music, Fogerty affirms Nixon as the inspiration for his song, calling the former president "a schmuck." The specific event that triggered Fogerty to write the song happened October 15, 1969, when millions of people marched around the world to protest the Vietnam War. Nixon completely dismissed the event. As Fogerty remembers it, the former president said, "Nothing you do here today will have any effect on me. I'm going back inside to watch the football game." That dismissive attitude enraged Fogerty at the time and, judging from the writing in Fortunate Son, enrages him still.
From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/creedence-clearwater-revival/effigy